Robin Esrock - The Great Western Canada Bucket List: One-of-a-Kind Travel Experiences

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For my grandmother, Fanny Esrock

Copyright

Copyright 2015 by Robin Esrock

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Esrock, Robin, 1974-, author

The great western Canada bucket list : one-of-a-kind travel experiences / Robin Esrock.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-4597-2965-0 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-1-4597-2966-7 (pdf).-

ISBN 978-1-4597-2967-4 (epub)

1.Alberta--Guidebooks. 2.British Columbia--Guidebooks. 3.Esrock, Robin, 1974- --Travel--Alberta. 4.Esrock, Robin, 1974- -- Travel--British Columbia. 5.Alberta--Description and travel. 6.British Columbia--Description and travel. I.Title.

FC3657.E86 2015 917.123044 C2014-907093-4

C2014-907094-2

Editor: Allison Hirst

Cover and text concept: Tania Craan

Cover design: Courtney Horner

Text design: Laura Boyle

Epub design: Carmen Giraudy

Cover images: T.J. Watt/ Robin Esrock/ Melissa Barnes, Penticton & Wine Country Tourism/ Joe Kalmek/ Paul Zizka, SkiBig3/ Robin Esrock/ Jeff Topham/ Ian Mackenzie (back)

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and Livres Canada Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

J. Kirk Howard, President

The publisher is not responsible for websites or their content unless they are owned by the publisher.

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I thought I lived in Gods Country, and then I came here, an Australian tourist tells me about his vacation in western Canada. We are descending in a carriage on the Sea to Sky Gondola, the latest attraction in a region full of them, with the green waters of the Howe Sound glittering below in the late afternoon sun.

Whatever your relationship with God, we can all understand the Aussies sentiment. Gods Country: a place of such incredible beauty that it belongs in a higher realm.

Having spent ten years travelling to six continents, Ive found Gods Country to have transparent, unlimited borders. Deserts offer a rare beauty. You can drink jungle air like an elixir, hang dreams on the fronds of beach palms, and breathe tranquility on the tundra. Yet Ive also discovered that deep-cut fjords, dense coastal rainforests, soaring snow-tipped mountain peaks, and turquoise glacial lakes form the very foundation of what many conceive to be natural beauty. This beauty sits as the foundation of British Columbia and Albertas bucket list and were just getting started.

You have to experience this before you die : Its a bold statement for any destination or activity. After all, we all have different tastes and interests, and when it comes to travel, just about anything can float your dinghy. A travel writers job is to uncover the remarkable and the unique. Much like an accountant crunches spreadsheets, travel writers chase experiences. In doing so, we inspire ourselves, and our readers, too.

Several years ago, the topic of my column in the Canada Day issue of the Globe and Mail was The Great Canadian Bucket List. I listed a dozen must-do experiences across the country. A publisher asked me if I was interested in turning that into a guidebook. But Ive long felt traditional guidebooks can be as dry as a moon rock, which is why Ive seldom used one in my journeys to more than one hundred countries. Simply put: straight facts dont inspire juicy dreams. A ranch vacation in the Porcupine Hills, tracking the spirit bear, sailing in the Galapagos of the North what does this even mean, and what does it feel like? If I hoped to write about the best of Canada, I was determined to experience the best of Canada. Thus began my two-year journey to every province and territory.

Years of international adventure taught me that meaningful travel is as much about the people you meet as the places you go. If I wanted to find compelling stories, Id need to find the characters that dont live on Wikipedia. My Great Canadian Bucket List became a smash bestseller because one of those characters was an immigrant, discovering his new country with a sense of awe and wonder. And that happened to be me.

Like many tourists, my first impressions of coastal British Columbia left me speechless. Id landed in Vancouver as an immigrant, without having ever stepped foot in North America. It was a bright August day, with fireworks scheduled that evening in English Bay. A day later, a friend took me on a ferry to the Gulf Islands. Id seen similar scenery backpacking in Scandinavia, but not as big , and certainly not as accessible. When I discovered the Rocky Mountains, my visits to the Alps and Andes paled in comparison. Yes, youll find elements of western Canadas beauty elsewhere, but not on this scale, and certainly not with the regions world-class hotel, dining, transportation, and attractions infrastructure. western Canada makes it exceptionally easy to tick off your bucket list, and to inspire new dreams.

Beyond the natural assets, I sought one-of-a-kind experiences unique to the region: snorkelling with tens of thousands of salmon, heli-yoga atop a mountaintop, digging for dinosaur fossils, and skiing inside a UNESCO World Heritage Site are just some of the adventures youll find in these pages. Since Id like nothing more than for you to follow in my footsteps, each chapter points to a companion website where youll find practical information, videos, galleries, reading guides, and other bonus content.